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Well, not necessarily. It's not quite as simple as simply throwing a bunch of plants in a tank. There are some very specific considerations for plants when doing a Walstad style Natural Planted Tank. CO2 is a variation, if done true to form, them emergent growth plants or floating plants are used. My current NPT has no water movement at all, but the surface is nearly covered with Amazon Frogbit.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Do you know what the El Dosing method is? I've heard it several times but don't quite understand it. And I understand that it's more than just "throwing" plants in there. I think I have some allelopathy going on in my tank. My Jungle Val hasn't grown except for 1 leaf since I've trimmed it 3 weeks ago. I cut the runners off and my plant hasn't gone crazy like Jungle Val is known for.

EI = Estimative Index. It is a system that was developed in large part by Tom Barr. Basically, you dose your tank based mostly on size. It assumes a large biomass of plants and sufficient CO2. It's not too complicated really, it is supposed to be a "simple" approach to dosing. Rather than get precise with measuring out each nutrient, you simply add a set amount of macro elements every other day, and on the off days you add the trace elements. Then once a week you do a %50 water change.

Allelopathy is unlikely. Sounds to me like your plant is simply recovering and re-establishing some roots.

The Jungle Val is in my 10g btw, just to clarify. That doesn't sound too complicated at all. It has some decent roots already, but you think it's just re-establishing it's roots? I've never had Jungle Val before and I love how it looks when it grows out so that's why I thought I'd give it a try.

I'll take a picture now and upload it when I get up to Pennsylvania. We're going to see our Maw-Maw (grandma) and I'll have little to no service. I can't do it fast enough here with my dad being a bundle of joy.

What you can do that I didn't do, is when you lay the dirt down, leave a little gap in the front from the dirt and the glass and when you cap it with your gravel/sand, you can put it in the little gap you made so that from the front of the tank, you can't see the dirt. The only thing that's going wrong with my sister's tank, is that it's got an algae problem. It's not green algae, but more of a gunk type stuff.

It's been a little over 2 months since I've updated this thread, I need to get a picture from my sister and update it. I'm considering rescaping the tank and taking the gravel out and replacing it with sand, or maybe half sand/half gravel.